Algonquin Park and the Group of Seven

I have known the work of “Tom Thompson and the Group of Seven” since shortly after I arrived in Canada.

In my innermost understanding I always admired their work but could not quite place it into “the natural surroundings”, into the world as I saw it.

Around 1960 I was urged by a friend, who also happened to be the Deputy Minister of what was then called: The "Department of Lands and Forests", to visit Ontario's largest Provincial Nature Preserve: “Algonquin Park”. He persisted in his urging and arranged that I should be met by the Park Superintendent,

a former bush pilot of Finish roots, Yorki Fisker.

My friend and Yorki decided to introduce me to Algonquin “the right way”.

They arranged for an Native of the Algonquin tribe to be my guide over a four day canoeing trip, which had it all.

Many lakes, connected by “portages”, or rivers, Islands in the Lakes, on which we pitched my tent.

The guide slept, wrapped into a heavy blanket on the ground in spite of my urgings to share the large enough tent with me.

The first morning, when early light showed over and through the trees, I went down to the shore to fetch some water for our morning tea.

Then it absolutely hit me: This is exactly what Tom Thompson, A.Y. Jackson, Franklin Carmichael, Arthur Lismer and the others of the Group of Seven saw and what they painted. They painted the Canadian North in all its stark beauty.

Yes, they simplified the trees surrounding the lakes, with simple strokes of their brush they showed us the Autumn red leaves of the Maple or the Sumach, they put before us the gold of the Birches, the shimmering water of the brook and the stillness of the lake.

They painted “Algonquin Park” in all the beauty in which I perceived it this first morning on the shores of a lake, whose name I no longer remember.

But I have never forgotten the feeling which rose in me, which almost closed my throat and brought tears to my unbelieving eyes.

Right then and there I fell in love with Algonquin Park, with Canada and last but not least with the “Group of Seven and Tom Thompson”

Bertstravels

still thinks that this is

one of the most beautiful corners of the world.